Two Weeks In

I read an article about the expat psyche and it's a study about people living in Vietnam for more than 5 years.      It focuses on how people come to be affected by the way they view and interact with their adopted society.  It's been about 2 weeks since Paul and I have moved here and I am extremely impressed with Paul because of his ability to change and adapt to his new environment so quickly.  I was raised with Vietnamese and Chinese spoken in my house and I was also familiar with the diet although I ate a lot of American food and spoke English for the most part with my family, but at least I had an introduction.  But Paul never really ate fish sauce, bun, com tam and other exotic dishes and he learned to eat this everyday for every meal. On top of all that, he is surrounded by the Vietnamese language and is surprisingly trying very hard to learn it.

It's crucial that we both unlearn old behaviors and learn new ones.  Unfortunately, the new behavior requires us to become illogical, have extremely strong stomachs, and maniacs on the road.  The change in our US behavior is the key to the adjustment process.  Fortunately we have created a "bubble" for ourselves.  We have made friends with a group of Canadian Teachers, a UK couple and 3 Chinese bachelors from San Diego.  With this new group of friends we have created an environment where we feel more at home.  Since these people share certain similar upbringings and lifestyles from the West, it really is comforting when you can speak in your native tongue and even predict the other person's behavior.

The downfall to this is that by entering a group of expats, you soon become dependent on each other hence there are a lot of get togethers which always involves drinking, and since it's so cheap you can actually do this everyday without breaking the bank.  I can see this lifestyle leading to a bad habit.  Paul and I did anticipate this and agreed that this trip to Vietnam will encase a healthy life by not drinking so much, working out every other day and eating well.  We have made an effort to share our goals with our new found friends so I hope they don't get upset with us when we decline the daily happy hour invites.

I can also foresee growing close to some of these people but since they are expats who are naturally transient, I'm already getting sad thinking about losing them as friends when they decide to pick up and explore another country.  Maybe I'll have to make a new rule and not allow myself to befriend people who are not staying more than a year.

I had a conversation with some of my new expat friends, and I found their responses really strange when I shared with them that I was keeping a blog, they couldn't understand what there was to blog about, I guess they have pretty much gotten use to the life in Vietnam since they don't find the cultural differences interesting anymore.  I wonder if I'll ever stop seeing Vietnam as an experience and if it will just become a place we chose to live our lives.